Top Assange Defense Account Deleted By Twitter

One of the biggest Twitter accounts dedicated to circulating information and advocacy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, @Unity4J, has been completely removed from the site. The operators of the account report that they have been given no reason for its removal by Twitter staff, and have received no response to their appeals.

Any Assange supporter active on Twitter will be familiar with the Unity4J account, which originated to help boost the wildly successful Unity4J online vigils in which well-known Assange defenders would appear to speak out against his persecution. As of this writing, the account has been gone for a day and a half.

“About 8:45am CST on Thursday July 11, one of our Unity4J Twitter team members went to retweet on the account and noticed that the account was no longer accessible,” reports pro-Assange activist Christy Dopf, one of the operators of the account. “When each of us also attempted to access the account we all received the same message ‘Account Suspended’. Twitter did not send us a reason or violation for the suspension. So an appeal was submitted. We did receive correspondence that Twitter got our request and the case is currently open. Unfortunately we do not have a timeline on how long this could take.”

Speaking for myself as a vocal Assange supporter on Twitter, I can say that I’ve been following the @Unity4J account closely since its earliest days and I’ve never once seen it post anything other than highly professional-looking advocacy for Julian Assange. I’ve certainly never seen it post anything that could be construed as abusive, misleading, or otherwise in violation of any of Twitter’s posted rules.

The main Twitter account defending Julian Assange, and therefore press freedom & freedom of speech, has been suspended.@Unity4J – suspended for defending a hero.#Unity4J

This account’s deletion is just the latest in a long string of apparently biased actions against WikiLeaks and Assange by the immensely influential social media platform. That bias was made abundantly clear with Twitter’s ridiculous refusal to verify Assange while he was posting from his own account despite his undeniably being a significant public figure, and despite the fact that Twitter was well aware that the account was authentic. The platform has been receiving consistent complaints among Assange supporters of using shadow bans to marginalize their voices, as well as unfair posting locks and restrictions.

“It seems that Assange supporters have been targeted for suspension over the last few days and weeks, including the suspension of individuals (Yon Solitary, Monique Jolie) as well as accounts like Unity4J,” Unity4J co-founder Elizabeth Lea Vos told me today. “All of these suspensions are unacceptable, but I find the Unity4J suspension especially egregious because it was an amplifier of events across the board, not only actions run by Unity4J. It never broke the twitter rules and it was an activist account supporting a journalist who’s been silenced or ‘disappeared,’ so this suspension is an extension of that suppression. Assange asked us to become his voice, and platforms like Twitter appear to be actively working against the possibility of that effort.”

Pro-Assange activists have been speaking out on Twitter against @Unity4J’s removal.

“I have no doubt that @Unity4J’s twitter account was suspended because it was a hub of useful information on solidarity events and actions in support of Assange, WikiLeaks, Chelsea Manning and more. Horrendous censorship to suspend the account, @TwitterSupport,” tweeted Elizabeth Lea Vos.

“If @Unity4J is not restored, it is proof that Twitter would have sided against the Free Mandela movement, and every other mass liberation movement of a ‘terrorist’ turned Nobel nominee,” tweeted Unity4J co-founder Suzie Dawson.

Many other Assange supporters have been flagging the attention of the Twitter Support account and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey objecting to the unjust silencing of a perfectly legitimate activist account, to no avail thus far.

The censorship of political speech on online media platforms is a large and growing problem. Twitter has been better about this than the far more sycophantic Facebook and Google, but the discrimination against anti-establishment political speech is undeniable at this point. I myself was removed from the platform last year just for saying the world would be better off without warmongering US Senator John McCain in it, and was only restored after protests from high-profile Twitter users.

In a corporatist system of government, in which there is no meaningful separation of corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. With giant Silicon Valley corporations aligning themselves with shady state-funded propagandistic think tanks like the Atlantic Council, being admonished on the Senate floor that they must help quash political rebellion, and being targeted for narrative control influence by the US military, there’s vanishingly little difference between what’s happening more and more to political speech with these tech giants and what happens in overtly totalitarian governments. The only difference is the stories people choose to tell themselves about it.

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NJH/July 15, 2019

It’s obvious the Globalists have stolen the blueprint from Orwell’s 1984. We are already living in dystopia. The burning of books (i.e. twitter, facebook, google, etc, accounts) is already here, growing day by day. Big Brother is everywhere and watches everything. The only question that remains: when will “We” collectively turn on them and take back control? Until then, this quantum reality video game we all live in will tilt in their favor, as it has for millennium. So why don’t we learn this black & white lesson that is always staring us in our faces? Are we humans so meek and afraid we just give our rights away to these lizard/reptilian hoarders? If so, game is over!

JR/July 15, 2019

Anyone using a “social media account” (social manipulation) seriously needs to have their head examined.

a) You don’t own the data, posts, content – they do.

b) You don’t control the access, likes, feeds, or views – they do.

c) You don’t write the “rules” which govern who can view, who can post, what can be said, or how it works – they do.

d) You give up all of this – just so you can “have” your free “platform” and pretend that you are “being heard” – which imo is really, really stupid.

e) They create massive databases, profiles, networks and connections on everyone that reads, posts, shares, likes or participates in any way with these social media accounts.

f) They use all of this information pretending it’s to “help” you, but it’s all about the money and how they can use the social metrics and behavioral modifications to control people and sell this data for revenue.

Read “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff for a detailed look at this. However, this book doesn’t go quite far enough – they are now literally “programming” attitudes, beliefs, ideology and people with social media manipulation, algorithms, and surveillance capitalism. That’s why people are passive today and think online comments and “protests” pass for real activism.

At the drop of a hat, or at the slightest provocation of “dissent”, disagreement or “violation”, they can simply destroy your account, deny you access and delete years and years of work. If you’re own revenue is based upon a social media account of any type – except to be gut punched (bankrupted) if you have even the slightest inclination to challenge the status quo.

I’ve warned about this trap for years – but very few people will listen, until it happens to them. Social media is the worst methodology of all for anyone attempting to engage an audience on any subject. You are contained in their box, giving away all the metrics, attitudes, beliefs, behavior, history, connections, friends, relationships, activities and virtually everything else to a unaccountable corporation that will leverage all of this for behavioral modification on EVERYONE that participates on these platforms.

Frankly, everyone should abandon all forms of social media immediately, foregoing all of their supposed “advantages” and go back to the privately controlled, owned and operated internet (websites, forums, blogs), never again to spend a nano-second on anything even related to “social media” (social modification).

I’ve only graced the very tips of this grand deception, it’s much worse then this in reality.

Kat/July 14, 2019

Just wanted to point out that another website dedicated to defending Wikileaks is also apparently under attack. Try going to defend.wikileaks.org and see if you can get through or not. A couple of times I got kicked over to another website titled julianpaulassange.com that appears to be less than legit. I found a lot of good information under the “Take Action” tab of Defend Wikileaks but unfortunately I haven’t been able to access it since my first visit.

Joe Van Steenbergen/July 14, 2019

Like it or not, there is precious little we can do about all this. Much of it is censorship driven by advertisers worried about “brand safety,” especially as so much more advertising is now online. Couple that with the determination by Big Ad that anything Trump is toxic and you have what appears to be a bias tilt against dissidents, conservatives and libertarians (all to protect “brand safety”). IMO, advertising ruins everything it touches, always has. Once ad spending online became more prevalent, Big Ad started dictating who and what could be associated with their ads, as they always do, and the internet as we knew it started to go away. Sadly, there are no alternatives to Twitter, the Facebag and Youtube for getting messages out, since the audiences people want to reach are all there.

Biff Thiele/July 14, 2019

Yogi/July 14, 2019

JS Smith/July 13, 2019

Dear Twitterers… Time for action…real action that the MSM will see and cover. So… Stop complaining and start the march. Stop complaining and start the march. Stop complaining and start the march. In every city.

JR/July 15, 2019

Seriously – is that your best idea? Marching? It’s been tried. And tried. And tried. And it’s never. ever. worked. Detailed study of the protests marches has been undertaken many times, and their findings are that it’s not the marches that eventually “worked”.

NJH/July 15, 2019

People marching IS the real answer–in massive numbers! Indeed, that is what really scares the 1% thieves, cowards, and pedophiles! They know the power of the people–if we would only be brave enough to use it to keep them under our thumbs-not the other way around!!

PCPrincess/July 14, 2019

Unfortunately, both d.tube and steemit.com are little more than models that ‘motivate’ people to use their energies to chase currency, no different than Uber’s business model that siphons off the vast majority of money made for CEO, management and the shareholders.

Ironically, (love him or hate him) Alex Jones said it best: “There’s A War On For Your Mind”. Silencing, Censorship, Shadow Banning, Closing Accounts, Shutting Down, Removing, or whatever you call it, the entire goal and agenda is for the OWNERSHIP OF YOUR MIND. Selling your way or ideal means what you are selling must outperform, outclass, and out do the competition. REMOVING any and all of your competitors is not about selling, but insisting, as there really is now only one choice to be had. Vaporize the competition or OPPOSITION. FORCE ? COMMUNISM ?

phil de/July 13, 2019

Anyone who wants to join in the conversation to learn for oneself, influence and educate others is restricted to using faceboob and twitter. These social media platforms are the most popular, and have the longest reach. BDS is not an option until a platform equally as popular and uncensored is available. I joined the Russian equivalent known as VK, however I just felt like I was stranded on a desert island and have since deactivated the account. Then I signed up for steemit in order to access Dtube and the whole block chain thing did my head in, so I never went back there. We don’t really seem to have an easy alternative, and that’s how they like it. So now I’m left to visit well known alternative websites, journos and bloggers. Thank our lucky stars for Caitlin.. possibly the only one who reads my comments.

U/July 13, 2019

The Twitter leadership are hypocrites and cowards. They support Trimp and Trump only. They even allow Trump to break all their rules. Twitter does not believe in freedom. $50,000,000 hit on all Twitter leadership members.

norm de plume/July 13, 2019

Ideally, we would have Wikileaks publish material from insider hackers that prove either one of the two possibilities: the strong-arming of Twitter and co into toeing the party line by US (or at least 5 Eyes) intelligence, or, more likely, the corporate decision-making that led to this censorship completely independent of any direct political pressure, but crafted with that implicit pressure in mind.

Failing that, we can only keep trying to disrupt elite ‘control of the narrative’ ie, the dominant mainstream media (which now of course includes social media). To this end the strategy employed by Ron Unz and his Unz Review (where opponents of the mainstream from across almost the entire political spectrum freely air their views) seems to me useful. The price to be paid certainly includes a fair amount of nose-holding, but it is refreshing to read an overview of his tactics, generated by thought rather than feeling and driven by seeing the destination as more important than the detours taken on the journey. Vicries in big battles don’t always win wars. Much sage advice here:

Censorship is an effective way to control the narrative. Sites that censor, like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, must be abandoned by its users that desire freedom of speech. That’s right, abandoned. There is no other solution, unless you can afford to buy the parent company, and if you can afford that, you aren’t likely to be a supporter of free speech anyway. If you want a similar platform that does not censor, someone will have to create it and ensure that censorship cannot occur there. I’ve seen this very same scenario play out in the online forum world over the last nine years. New forums of censored individuals were created, but in almost every case, the new forum owner would eventually resort to censorship of words or people he didn’t like. This would repeat the cycle, with “free speechers” leaving to start a new forum which then fell victim to the same problem. So what does that tell us? Most of us have been brainwashed to believe in free speech but not to allow it. That means we have bought into a controlled narrative fed to us by our controllers.

cutthecord/July 13, 2019

You Twitterers need an alternative site. I can’t imagine why you would want to stay on Twitter/Facebook/YahooGroups/GoogleGroups/YouTube when you KNOW they are censoring. You didn’t even mention the most likely cause is not the Twitter Censorship Board but secret CIA/FBI/Mossad pressure.

Probably the safest location would be in China (weibo.com) or Russia (Yandex). https://alternativeto.net/software/twitter/ gives 20 alternatives, of which Twister is based on P2P technology so doesn’t have a central server. Assange’s legal team should have this set up already.

Lloyd/July 13, 2019

mike k/July 13, 2019

Petra Liverani/July 13, 2019

Key points about the Wikileaks/Assange case are that Chelsea Manning is a fake whistleblower and the Collateral Murder video is faked but everyone just goes along ignoring these key points. It truly astounds me. Truly. So I just bleat like an idiot every time this case is mentioned, “Hey, hey, controlled opposition. Call it out, at least. Please call it out.”

The really counterintuitive thing about it is that they make it clear when you look at it closely. They push their hoaxery and fakery in our faces, in fact, and yet we still ignore it BECAUSE IT DOESN’T SUIT OUR NARRATIVE. Caitlin, you talk about “narrative” all the time as if you don’t have your own narrative, as if you aren’t invested in the narrative that fits your view of things. You WANT Chelsea to be the brave whistleblower that fits your narrative, you WANT the Collateral Murder video to be real – those terrible soldiers killing poor civilians. And that’s where you’re exactly in the place the power elite want you to be. Don’t you see how they play to all of us, how they have us all profiled and how they know what to feed us to make us believe this, that or the other. They push out Chelsea and the video: some will think, “Poor Chelsea”, some will not get past “transgender” (that’s the only real part) and some will think “Oh the Rules of Engagement weren’t broken, what’s the fuss?” and others will think “How terrible, killing those civilians so callously.” They push our buttons all the time in this way. They give us “plausible” things that aren’t real to better control us. It’s all about control.

You must drop the narrative you want to believe or have believed for however long and judge only by the evidence. You have to be ready to turn on a dime when evidence appears contradicting your original thought. I thought Chelsea and the video were real for a decade and then the moment my suspicion was aroused by a beautiful photograph the pennies started to drop and then when I looked, all the evidence supported what I had started to suspect.https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/wikileaks-controlled-opposition.html

Someone posted this article on Facebook about Aboriginal students being treated badly when they were giving a performance with a petition to sign. When you read the story closely, however, you can see it doesn’t add up. There are contradictory reasons for the performance being stopped and it simply does not make sense. So they’re pushing our buttons but actually telling us the story is fake at the same time. You need to be able to emotionally detach from the stories they tell us, you need to be immune to the taboos around death because the power elite certainly are – they capitalise and exploit the taboos around death to dupe us and to intimidate us into not questioning their claims about people dying in their big terror events.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-09/nsw-government-investigates-after-students-laughed-off-stage/11291028

cutthecord/July 13, 2019

I put a link, Sandra, and would have thought that it is understood that that is where the case is for Chelsea being controlled opposition, however, I realise (I should have realised it so much earlier) that this is not an automatically understood thing. If you go to this link I make my case there.https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/wikileaks-controlled-opposition.html — In summary: — Chelsea’s Wikipedia entry is not plausible — Chelsea is anomalously feted by the MSM — Her first interview after her alleged 7 year jail sentence was with Juju Chang (active member of the Council on Foreign Relations) in which she says things that are not consistent with genuine whistleblower. The interview appears very controlled. — The Collateral Murder video contains 13 callsigns which seems anomalous to the number of callsigns you’d expect, the audio does not match the visuals and it seems to be mostly bits of genuine audio stitched together. When you look at all the explosions they look as if they could easily be non-lethal ones. Overall, the way the soldiers speak doesn’t really ring true. I have no doubt that soldiers do worse things than what we see in Collateral Murder and there may well be video of them doing such things but the power elite would NEVER show us the real stuff, never in a million years. They will push out negative stuff (because they know we think the negative stuff anyway) but it has to be under their control, they have to be the ones producing it. — What I find remarkable after studying these events for a few years now is how much truth (or probably more often “truthiness”) the perpetrators are willing to push out. They know that a certain percentage of the population only thinks bad things of them anyway and knows a certain amount of truth anyway so they exploit the truth they already know and mix it with lies and play up to the fact that we have bad expectations of them. They are completely and utterly shameless. I just discovered the other day that someone I had complete faith in was controlled opposition. It so took me by surprise because I’ve studied these events for a few years now and have already recognised so much controlled opposition – yet he still totally had me fooled. Hats off to the guy, he did a really convincing job I must say. — Below are three snippets of conversations on 9/11 under which I’ve put an analysis. Mindblowing the truth they will tell that just slips by. — Dan Rather, CBS News Anchor asks Jerome Hauer, WTC Security Contractor about the cause of collapse of the twin towers: “Is it possible that just a plane crash could have collapsed these buildings? Or would it have required the prior positioning of other explosives in the building? What do you think?” “No my sense is just the velocity of the plane and the fact that you have a plane filled with fuel hitting that building and I think it was simply the planes hitting the buildings and causing the collapse.” — Conversation between Brian Williams, MSNBC News Anchor and David Restuccio, FDNY EMS Lieutenant about WTC-7, the third building to collapse at the WTC on 9/11, after its collapse: “Can you confirm that it was No 7 that just went in?” [“Went in” is a term used in controlled demolition that comes from the fact that the buildings fall in on themselves.] “Yes, sir.” “And you guys knew this was comin’ all day.” “We had heard reports that the building was unstable and that eventually it would either come down on its own or it would be taken down.” — Dan Rather reporting on the collapse of WTC-7: “For the third time today, it’s reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen too much of on television, where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.” — ​—– The first exchange is propaganda to persuade us that 200-ton airliners were able to bring down 500.000 ton buildings … with an oblique reference to the truth. —– The second one, on the other hand, is more truth than propaganda. We can only infer that it is a legal requirement of staged events that indications be provided that it is they who are responsible for the event and one of the ways is actually telling the truth. They very clearly tell us the truth by saying it “went in” and that they “knew it was comin’ all day” with a little propaganda thrown in – it might “come down on its own” (no possibility of that). With regard to the “building was unstable” this may well have been a true statement as there could have been work done to weaken the building early on 9/11 when the twin towers were capturing all the attention or even before 9/11.. —– The third one – unadulterated truth, no?, at least, when you know it’s scripted. — For links to the above exchanges watch these two very clever songs, Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ and I Believe in (9/11) Miracles, done about the collapse of WTC-7 Free Fallin’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5b719rVpds I Believe in Miracles – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71fwKA9Udso

Muskie/July 14, 2019

And how do you think she managed to run for the US Senate, Muskie, and how do we know that they refused to cover her campaign? Who told us that? When it comes to the power elite, Muskie, a little sophistication of thought is required. A little sophistication. They are absolutely streets ahead of us so we need to lift our thinking to a higher plane and try to understand them a little better. — Here are the basics: — They love to fool us and they’re ever so experienced in this exercise, ever, ever so experienced — They realised (possibly centuries or even millennia ago) that they can fool us while pushing their hoaxery right in our faces so pushing it in our faces has become part of the modus operandi, a kind of “legality” that no doubt is in their psychological operations manuals – this probably helps with enlisting their collaborators in government, agencies, corporations, media, etc. “We effectively tell them the truth with elements in the narrative that undermine it, so it’s OK.” We can see from some of the ridiculousness they insert into the narrative to undermine it that they get a great laugh out of it too, eg, Chelsea labelling the CDs she downloaded all the leaked information onto as “Lady Ga Ga” to “smuggle them through security.” — There is absolutely masses of “controlled opposition”, masses and masses and masses and masses – people who pretend they oppose the power elite but who are really batting for them. Seriously, you can barely breathe for these people, especially in relation to 9/11. It’s mindblowing what truth they will push out shamelessly. I mean, sure we already know it mostly anyway but the way they push it out still astounds me.

PCPrincess/July 14, 2019

You are both right and wrong. You are correct in questioning 9/11, but you are incorrect with respect to the Collateral Murder video and the release of it. I will continue to base my ‘beliefs’ NOT on what I see in the media but on what the scientific facts, based on the scientific method say about the evidence.

John/July 13, 2019

“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” Revelation 20:12 (KJV)

John/July 13, 2019

Ren/July 16, 2019

“God” is “Christian and Israeli zionists attempting to accelerate the “end times”. “God” is muslims waging jihad and implementing backwards draconian theocracy. No. God is not the answer. God is not real – just a human made idea to create war and diversion, as all religions.

The answer is humanity taking back government and freedom. Religion is not free speech, it’s mass mental illness.

emma portman/July 13, 2019

Youtube is now censoring all news that is not a government press release. Twitter is censoring everybody we would bother reading. We need to move to uncensored alternatives – Bitchute is gaining every day. as for twitter I do not know of alternatives, but surely someone has opened one. All of the silicon tech companies are under government contract. google, amazon, facebook, twitter, microsoft, youtube. boycott all of them.

Truth first/July 13, 2019

“No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.” William Blum, 1933 – 2018, author of Rogue State, Killing Hope, America’s Deadliest Export-Democracy, Freeing the World to Death and his own memoir, West-Bloc Dissident.

But, paradoxically, kind of less worse in some ways … although not really. Many people believe that 9/11 was a false flag in which the US government callously allowed all those people in the buildings to die but the US government would never in a million years have done that, that is so outside their MO. 9/11 was a false-flag hoax which they very cleverly made the truthers (including me for four years of study) believe was a “real” false flag.https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/3000-dead-and-6000-injured-a-lie.html

PCPrincess/July 14, 2019

For us to ‘give credence’ to your theory about 9/11 is to give WAY to much credit to the human species. The species is faulty, greedy, selfish, and easy-to-manipulate. However, for your theory to hold true would require one thing of human beings that for the vast majority of them is not true: that they be smart.

Mark Mc Donald/July 13, 2019

Charles Robinson/July 13, 2019

Robyn/July 13, 2019

I agree. What’s the point of constantly complaining about these bandits and still using them. It’s obvious they are nothing but a thin gloss of lipstick on the pig of mass surveillance and censorship. The tide won’t turn with individual nobodies like me refusing to use them, but surely if all the ‘high-profile’ users got together to boycott at least you’d have their attention.

The standard you walk past (ie frequent and utilise and rely on) is the standard you accept.

Nylene13/July 13, 2019

Charles Robinson/July 13, 2019

That I do not know but many are silently censored and many channels whom they don’t like have been demonitized. I still use YouTube and I have had my posted videos disappear and Iam sure they make it hard for people to find my videos. I have also refused to monitized my channel.

Muskie/July 14, 2019

unity4J has a website. Think back to the dusty old days of the internet and remember something called a World Wide Web. Its what you’d expect, unity4J dot com. And, that site has an email list, so you give them your email address, and the operators of that site can send you any messages they choose to send out. I only recently signed up, so I don’t know how they use that email list, but if Unity4J wanted to do so, they could use that to pass around everything they’d post on Twits or Re-Twit. ————– The only reason people feel trapped by corporate control of today’s internet is because they bought into the idea that these corporate products are the internet. They are not. Maybe we just go radical and old school. Maybe we even print out a Newsletter as a PDF file and put it up on a FTP server for people to download. But we can communicate. Nothing about that has changed.

certainquirk/July 12, 2019

Wikileaks should have started their own forum/social hub long ago because anyone with half a wit saw this coming. If anyone should understand that these media corporations are not to be trusted it’s WL supporters.

I’ve been gone from Twitter from more than 3 years now and I only check for updates on certain accounts (RT, WL, etc) without bothering to have an account myself.

It’s terribly tempting to want to feed the hungry proletariat the meal they desire. But each of those comics you mention have all made me laugh hard. Much of late night comedy now sadly is remarkably interchangeable. Don’t despair https://t.co/MePoHPzcJq

@RobSchneider This is exactly why I reserve a special hatred for comedians like Bill Maher, Steve Colbert, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah who sell their talent to the churning out of propaganda for establishment power structures. https://t.co/vTVPNe3kU8

Excerpt from "Mainstream 'Centrists' Pose The Greatest Ideological Threat To Us All":

People like Ashton Kutcher imagine that the so-called “center” is called that because it sits smack dab in the middle of the ideological spectrum between communism and fascism, right in that moderate sweet spot that respects capitalism and private ownership without flying off the deep end into Nazi-like tyranny. In reality, the status quo exists entirely outside any left-right paradigm. It’s neither “left” nor “right” to give total control of the western world to an alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies who seek to expand their power and wealth by destroying our ecosystem, waging endless wars, and gradually shoring up more and more control of their citizenry via internet censorship, surveillance and police militarization. It’s just crazy.

I’m picking on Ashton not because he occupies some special place in all this, but because he doesn’t. He’s just an illustration of how blind people have become to the real threat that’s right in front of them, and how normalized insanity has become.

People who identify as “left” see the ruling power establishment as right-wing, people who identify as “right” see the ruling power establishment as left-wing, and people who identify as “center” see themselves as moderates whose normal, healthy way of life is under threat by the “far right” and “far left”. But really all that’s happening is a few assholes fucking over everyone else, which is no more “left” or “right” than a terrorist attack. The left versus right argument doesn’t even make sense until this far more pressing issue has been resolved. A Bernie supporter and a Trump supporter are arguing about left versus right while trapped in a room with a tiger who’s eating them both alive.